Weekend Briefing

NOPENHAGEN: Next month's U.N. climate summit in Copenhagen may turn out to be rather anticlimactic. Speaking to a group of college students in the Philippines on Friday, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said the heavily hyped conference probably won't produce a legally binding treaty, as it's intended to do, adding that the Obama administration will instead push for a strong "framework agreement" to serve as a template for a future pact. "We are going to go to Copenhagen 100 percent committed to creating a framework agreement," Clinton said. "We doubt that we can get to the legally binding agreement that everyone wants because too many countries have too many questions." While Clinton blamed foreign curiosity for the lowered expectations, the Washington Post's Juliet Eilperin points out that the realities of domestic U.S. politics are at least as big of a factor — with Congress unlikely to pass a climate bill in time for the Dec. 7 summit, American negotiators' hands would essentially be tied anyway. By downgrading its sights to an interim agreement, the Obama administration is trying to appease its European peers and prevent the Copenhagen summit from being labeled a failure. "An interim, operational deal is not meant to be seen as a substitute for a real agreement," says U.S. special envoy on climate change Todd Stern. "It's meant to be seen as substantive building blocks to a full, legal agreement, and perhaps the best chance of getting such an agreement." (Sources: Associated Press, Washington Post)

 

HIGHS AND LOWS: Climate scientists are normally the cool-headed ones in the room, reminding everyone that it's speculative to link daily weather events to long-term climate change. But the evidence has grown clear enough, report climatologists from the National Center for Atmospheric Research, that we can now say with certainty that record high temperatures are occurring about twice as often as record lows. "Climate change is making itself felt in terms of day-to-day weather," NCAR's Gerald Meehl said in a statement. "The ways these records are being broken show how our climate is already shifting." During the last decade, the continental United States saw 291,237 record highs and 142,420 record lows, a roughly 2:1 ratio that scientists say is substantial enough to raise concern — and likely to continue rising along with greenhouse gas emissions. Even 2009's first nine months, which were relatively cool following a string of warm years, had a high-to-low ratio of more than 3:2. In addition to illustrating the onset of climate change, the researchers also pointed out that the study is an example of how occasional cold weather isn't proof against climate change. "One of the messages of this study is, you still get cold days," Meehl said. "Winter still comes. Even in a much warmer climate, we're setting record low minimum temperatures on a few days each year. But the odds are shifting so there's a much better chance of daily record highs instead of lows." (Sources: MSNBC, e! Science News, ScienceDaily)

 

IN HOT WATER: Which is more important — the lives of 15 Americans each year, or the taste and tradition of unprocessed Gulf Coast oysters? That's the issue currently being debated by the Obama administration, Congress and the oyster industry, all centering around the bacterium Vibrio vulnificus, in addition to various other viral and bacterial contaminants. Eating raw shellfish is always a bit of a risk, since they can be contaminated with such microbes, but oysters growing in warm water are especially prone to infection because the warmer temperatures help the bacteria grow more rapidly. Contaminated raw oysters kill an average of 15 people in the United States each year, but that was enough to motivate the FDA to announce last month that, beginning in 2011, it will ban the sale of all raw oysters harvested from the Gulf Coast during the warm-water months. Freezing and pasteurization processes are capable of destroying the diseases in raw oysters, but the oyster industry is fighting back, arguing that such processing ruins the taste. Bills have been introduced in the House and Senate to block the FDA's ban. (Source: New York Times)

 

RAIN, RAIN, GO AWAY: This time last year, farmers in Texas and Oklahoma were battling one of the worst droughts since the Dust Bowl, and were forced to leave many cotton fields unplanted. Now, a year later and a couple states to the east, Mississippi farmers are facing "catastrophic" crop losses due to the opposite problem: way too much rain. Spring rains delayed planting, and the onset of El Niño dealt the biggest blows, since the weather phenomenon has been blasting a steady stream of storms across the Southern United States since summer, leading to record rainfall in September and October. The remnants of Hurricane Ida added insult to injury for Mississippi farmers this week, and economists are predicting the state's crop losses to reach at least $485 million. Two-thirds of Mississippi's sweet potato crop is expected to be lost, along with half the cotton harvest and 44 percent of all soybeans. (Source: Reuters)

 

GREEN SHOOTS: Investing billions of dollars now to protect endangered ecosystems would save trillions in the long run, according to a new U.N.-backed report. More than 1 billion humans are directly dependent on coral reefs, mangroves, forests and other forms of "natural capital" for survival, according to the study, and rapid destruction of these ecosystems could soon lead to starvation, wars and hordes of environmental refugees. The "Economics of Ecosystems and Biodiversity" study urges world leaders to take quick action to stop this destruction, pointing out that they have an economic incentive to convince their residents to focus more on the long-term protection of natural resources than on short-term profits. "Recognizing and rewarding the value delivered to society by the natural environment must become a policy priority," the study's lead author tells AFP. "Whereas climate change is a global issue with local ramifications, biodiversity is a collection of local issues." (Sources: BBC News, Agence France-Presse)

 

— Russell McLendon